Herhold: A night of crime on San Jose's Trevor Drive

Trevor Drive is a spacious, well-manicured street in south San Jose, made up of single-story homes built in the 1960s, a reminder of when the city had seemingly limitless space. It's a place where neighbors know and trust one another.

So when a bad guy broke into five cars on the street in a single night -- very early one morning in late March -- the tremors coursed through the neighborhood quickly.

Everyone soon learned that Misti Padro lost five gift cards from a purse she had left in a center console -- among them, Starbucks, GameStop and Home Depot.

And everyone knew that the burglar had insulted the neighborhood. From one vehicle across the street from Padro's house, he had stolen Baby Wipes and defecated in a corner near a backyard fence.

"It's such a quiet neighborhood,'' resident Steve Risko said. "We all have each other's back. For someone to come in at 3:30 in the morning, hit five cars, and then drive away is kind of an insult.''

It's an old story, sadly: The volume of property crime is soaring in San Jose. Neighbors report the vehicle break-ins to the cops. Already spread thin, the cops can't afford to investigate unless there is overwhelming evidence.

Growing cynicism

So you can see a growing cynicism in places where people never exhibited it before, an invasion tolled not so much in property losses as in peace of mind. Safest Big City? It feels like a punch line. Or maybe just a punch.

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A couple twists make the Trevor Drive case different. In the first place, the burglar was exceptionally audacious. A dark and blurry surveillance video caught him walking down the street, checking car doors as he went.

The owners of the five cars all say that their doors were locked. But there was no sign of forced entry, which makes some people wonder. Did the thief have a gizmo to unlock the cars electronically? It seems possible but hard to accept wholeheartedly.

What the Trevor Drive neighbors do know is that there was an encore. The burglar used Craigslist to try to sell one of Misty Padro's cards -- a $500 gift card to the Preston Wynne Spa in Saratoga. The price: $250 or "Proposition 215,'' meaning marijuana.

Spa's response

When a potential buyer called the spa to check out how much money was left on the card, the Preston Wynne people already knew from Misti Padro that it had been stolen. A spa official alerted Padro, who told police about the Craigslist ad. The spa card was the one card she had registered with a number.

The story might have ended there but for Basim Jaber, whom you may remember as the guy who led the fight to save the radar tower atop Mount Umunhum.

Jaber, who lives on a neighboring street, shook the tree among his police sources. And one of them responded, saying that they wanted to look at the Craigslist ad, which was visible for two weeks before finally expiring.

So hats off to the cop, who probably could have shrugged instead. Hats off, too, to the Trevor Drive neighbors who didn't give up. Punishment, alas, is another matter. No arrest has been made.

"It's like when you drive 85 mph down the freeway,'' says neighbor Paul B. Newman. "Even if you do get caught, you're only fined a couple hundred bucks. And you're bailed out the next day.''